The present invention relates to object maintenance and management in an on-line analytical processing system, business intelligence system or other reporting system.
Decision support systems have been developed to efficiently retrieve selected information from data warehouses. One type of decision support system is known as an on-line analytical processing system (xe2x80x9cOLAPxe2x80x9d). In general, OLAP systems analyze the data from a number of at different perspectives and support complex analyses against large input data sets. OLAP systems generate output upon execution of a report that includes a template to indicate the way to present the output and a filter to specify the conditions of data on which the report is to be processed.
Repositories of reports, templates, filters and other objects in OLAP, business intelligence or other reporting systems, may be numerous, extremely large and difficult to track. In addition to these issues, another layer of complexity may arise when a user tries to access a repository through different types of user interfaces. Some of these problems include object management specific to a particular user interface. For example, if an object is created using a specific user interface, viewing of the object is available only to other users using the specific user interface.
These and other drawbacks in existing systems are overcome through a technique for managing objects. In one embodiment, the technique is realized through an object management system in a reporting system. The system may include an object data repository and an object server in a reporting system. The object data repository may maintain a definition and other information for at least one object accessible by a plurality of user interfaces, including a web interface, desktop program, wireless device, telephone interfaces, xe2x80x9cpushxe2x80x9d email interfaces and API-based interface into the reporting system. The server may provide a single access point for enabling users at a plurality of user sites to access objects stored in the object data repository.
According to another aspect of the invention, a method for managing object data in a reporting system is described. The method may include enabling creation of objects accessible by a plurality of user interfaces in a reporting system, storing created objects in an object data repository of a reporting system, and enabling users at a plurality of sites to access objects in the reporting system through a single access port.
Through use of an object manager that controls objects for various types of reporting system report and query interfaces, an object defined or created by one interface (e.g., a desktop) may be accessed through a wireless interface. Therefore, a user that creates a template or filter through the desktop, for example, may access that template or filter using the API, for example, through the object manager.